


Love Lies Bleeding

by oldenuf2nb



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Bloodplay, Dark, Drama, Erotica, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Heroes to Villains, Hurt/Comfort, Masturbation, Not Epilogue Compliant, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Second War with Voldemort, Suicide, The Quidditch Pitch: Going Under, Tragedy, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-17
Updated: 2007-11-17
Packaged: 2018-10-27 16:27:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10812657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldenuf2nb/pseuds/oldenuf2nb
Summary: During her sixth year at Hogwarts, Ginny Weasley discovers a spell that allows her to turn a treasured birthday gift into a window on Harry Potter's soul.  What she sees is not what she expected...





	Love Lies Bleeding

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** A/N: This was written after I read a Harry/Draco story where Ginny was painted as the villian of the piece, jealous and spiteful, doing everything in her power to cause problems for these 'two poor misunderstood gay boys'. That got me thinking; how fair is that?  And what would you do, if the person you most loved suddenly turned out to be someone that you didn't know, and someone that you couldn't have...

  
Author's notes: Disclaimer: I do not own any of the wonderful charactgers in the Harry Potter Universe.  I WISH I did, but don't we all?  They are owned by the lovely Scottish Lady and the Big Movie Studio.  I only occasionally take them out to play, and try not to hurt them too badly.  Although, once in a while...*shrug*  


* * *

**  
LOVE LIES BLEEDING**

 

  
If her mother knew what she’d been doing, Ginny Weasley had no doubt that she’d be appalled.  _It was an invasion of his priva_ cy, she would rail.  _She had no right.  The boy had broken up with her, after all.  He must have had his reasons, and Ginny had no right_ …blah, blah, blah.  Ginny could almost recite the lecture verbatim, as if she’d already received it.  And to be fair, there were moments when some of what her ‘subconscious Molly’ was telling her rang true.  She probably shouldn’t be doing this; it probably was, at the very least, voyeuristic.  

She justified it by telling herself that she was just making sure that he was all right.  He was fighting a war, after all; she had a right to be worried about him.  Forget that he’d broken up with her ‘for her own safety’, forget that he’d avoided her all summer before she’d come back to Hogwarts.  She knew Harry; he was just shy, and trying to retain the will power to stay away from her.  She knew how he felt about her, had felt the tension in his lean body when he’d held her and kissed her, felt the passion as his hands had moved on her.  She’s felt his body’s instinctive reaction to her the few times they’d been close enough for her to gauge it.  It had been so innocent, really, but so fraught with potential. She loved him still, desperately, and she convinced herself that he loved her as well, and was only staying away from her to protect her.  The least she could do was to make every effort to protect him, in return.  

That’s what she’d told herself when she came across the spell, quite by accident, while researching a project for charms.  It had been right there in her textbook, after all.  If it had been dangerous, or ‘invasive’ for crying out loud, they’d never have included it in the curriculum.  But she’d stumbled across it, and then stared, her mind spinning with the possibilities. 

 The “ _specularis custodia_ ” spell, according to the textbook, turned a simple mirror into a device by which to ‘chronicle the movements of one’s beloved’.  The language was a bit archaic and hard to read, but the gist of the thing was that with some complicated wand work and a thrice repetition of the spell, a mirror became a portal through which you could watch someone unawares.  There had to be a deep emotional attachment, and you had to hold something that had once touched the subject’s skin, but the spell itself wasn’t that difficult.  There was some vague warning at the bottom of the page about being ‘prepared for the consequences of what one might see in a loved one’s soul’, but this Ginny ignored.  Harry had no secrets from her.

Here was an opportunity to check on him, she thought.  To see how he was, where he was.  He and Ron and Hermione had all but disappeared right after Bill and Fleur’s wedding and even though she received sporadic owls from Hermione, Ginny couldn’t help but be concerned about him. He’d been so silent at the Burrow, so serious, so withdrawn.  She knew that he was still mourning Dumbledore, but there was more to it.  She could feel it.  And so she ignored the little nagging voice of her conscience that sounded suspiciously like her mother, and late one Friday night had closed the musty velvet curtains around her bed in the sixth year’s girl’s dorm, casting silencing and privacy spells.  Cautiously, she’d slipped the silver hand mirror she’d been given for her sixteenth birthday from beneath her pillow, leaned against her headboard and curled her fingers in Harry’s old Quidditch jersey, the one with Potter 7 emblazoned across the back.  She’d nicked it from the locker room at the end of the previous year and now slept in it every night.  It no longer carried his scent, but it still made her feel close to him.  She made herself comfortable against her pillows and whispered _‘specularis custodia’_ three times. 

_“Take caution with your wishes….”_ A breathy voice whispered from the glass, unidentifiable as male or female.   Ginny jerked a bit, her eyes wide.  _“Are you certain you wish to see him?”_

“Yes,” she answered after a startled moment.

_“Very well.”_

It hadn’t taken long.  First, a mist appeared, as if she’d breathed on the glass and frosted it with her steamy breath.  Slowly, it had taken on the appearance of fog, shifting, moving.  She had watched in fascination as the condensation had slowly cleared, and then she’d gasped, her brown eyes avid. 

 There he was, in the mirror.  Harry was lying on his back, his hair an inky black tousle against a white pillow case.  His eyes were closed and he looked to be resting peacefully, the harsh lines of grief and fatigue that had taken up residence around his mouth and his eyes smoothed in sleep.  She avidly studied the heavy dark brows, the aquiline nose, the full soft lips gently parted as he breathed easily.  He needed a shave, she noted tenderly, his jaw and upper lip shadowed a slight blue against his tanned skin, and his hair was shaggy as if it needed a trim, but she thought he looked wonderful.  She’d watched him sleep for a long time that first time, before muttering ‘Finite Incantatem’ and slipping the mirror back beneath her pillow.

At first, she’d only cast the spell every few days.  Each time, the disembodied voice whispered the warning and asked the question.  _“Are you sure you wish to see him?”_ She always answered in the affirmative, and waited for him to appear. She’d watched him sleep, seen him at Order meetings, and watched him researching in the library at Grimmauld place with Hermione on one side and Ron on the other.  She could not hear what was being said, and the mirror focused solely on Harry, but she recognized Hermione’s efficient, ink stained hand gripping a quill on one side of him and Ron’s freckled forearm on the other.  Harry’s eyes were trained on a book open before him, and as she’d watched, he’d paused, closed his eyes and removed his glasses in order to rub with his thumb and forefinger at eyes that looked weary. She didn’t know what they were studying; didn’t really care, actually.  She just watched him avidly, soaking up the vision of his smooth skin, faintly cleft chin, sturdy neck above a faded gray t-shirt, strong square hand with its long, mobile fingers.  It was enough.  He was safe, and she could sleep.  

She began to notice things about him that she never had before, studying him unawares in the shiny surface of the mirror.  Before, he’d been there in the room with her.  There had always been the potential for him to look up and catch her staring, and she hadn’t wanted that.  She’d gleaned her knowledge of him surreptitiously, from between artfully lowered ginger colored lashes.  Now, she could watch him to her heart’s content without him being the wiser; study each expression, each nuance of movement.  And some of what she saw she found faintly worrisome.

He looked unhappy.  Not as if he were mourning Dumbledore, or even Sirius, but deeply troubled.  There was no light in his green eyes anymore, no quick smile.  In fact, he didn’t smile.  Well, hardly ever.  Once in while, when he was with Ron and Hermione, his lips might curl a bit, but the expression never reached his eyes.  He looked…weighed down, worried.  He bit his nails; he frowned, his fingers returned again and again to faintly trace the scar on his forehead, and then would pull his fringe forward as if to cover it.  He looked as if he were dropping weight, as well.  His features seemed more chiseled, less boyish.  It was an attractive look on him, and yet it worried her.  He was out there, battling evil, turning into a man while she was still sequestered at Hogwarts wearing pleated flannel skirts and knee socks.  She began to fear that he would outgrow her.  

Then there would be the blank stretches, when she couldn’t see him at all.  Those were the times that he and Ron and Hermione were not at Grimmauld Place.  She could only see him when she knew where he was; it was one of the safeguards of the spell.  She’d overheard just enough to know that they were on some sort of ‘hunt’ for something, but she could not ask what it was without revealing that she’d been eavesdropping, and she doubted that that would go over very well.  And so she waited, checking the mirror each night, and eventually, after a few days or a week, his image would reappear, back at Grimmauld Place, and she would breathe easier for a while.  She told herself over and over again that all she was doing was making sure that he was safe, until she couldn’t deny that her nighttime observations had another purpose, as well.    

There came the night when she’d taken all of the precautions, spelled the silence around her enclosed bed, and cast the spell.  

_“Take caution with your wishes.  Are you certain you wish to see him?”_ The mirror asked in its whispery voice.  

“Yes, for god’s sake.  Do we have to go through this every time?” Ginny snapped, irritated.  

_“Very well.”_

Leaning against a pile of pillows at her back, she held the mirror in one hand and plucked absently at the hem of the old jersey where it barely covered her thighs with the other, watching as the mist cleared and Harry’s face came into view. 

At first, she was certain he must be ill, and her brow furrowed. He was in bed again but this time, he wasn’t still.  His head was moving restlessly on the pillow, his skin was slicked with sweat.  His eyes were closed, his long black lashes curved crescents on his cheekbones and his full lips were parted slightly.  She could just see the straight white edge of his front teeth when he suddenly caught his full lower lip between them and bit it, could see the tendons standing out on either side of his neck as his chin lifted and jerked forward.  Fearing he was ill or having one of his nightmares, she frowned.  ‘I need to see more of him’, she thought a bit frantically, and as if her thoughts had caused the view to change, slowly, like a camera drawing back from a closely held focus, more of Harry came into view, and Ginny stared, both fascinated and startled.  Startled, because this truly did cross the line into ‘peeping tom-ism’, and fascinated by the unquestionably seductive nature of what she was watching.  

Harry wasn’t ill, or dreaming.

He was, quite simply, wanking.  And she stared.

Ginny had six brothers.  She’s never seen any of them participate in this particular activity; her mother would have summarily killed them if she had.  But the burrow was small, and sometimes silencing charms were forgotten.  She’d heard them; heard their beds squeaking, heard their muffled moans.  She also lived in a dorm with four other girls, and girls, contrary to what they wanted boys to believe, had one off at the wrist on a fairly regular basis, as well.  They’d gotten better about discretion as they’d gotten older, but everyone knew when someone was ‘relieving the pressure’.  No one ever said anything, but they knew.  And Ginny wasn’t unfamiliar with the activity herself; she and Harry had never gotten beyond some heavy snogging and light petting, but she’d wanted to.  Watching him now, she felt her heart slam into the back of her throat.  If she’d known he looked like that, she probably would have jumped him and simply insisted.

He was beautiful.  

He’d pushed his t-shirt up until the muscles of his chest as his nipples were exposed, and one of his hands was rubbing first one, and then the other, lightly.  She’d mapped that chest with her hands, felt the rise and fall of the curved pectorals and the hard little knots of his nipples beneath her fingers, but she’d never really ‘seen’ it before.  She knew he had hair on his chest; it was coarser than the hair on his head, and curlier.  But she hadn’t realized that he had quite as pronounced a ‘happy trail’ heading south from his navel, bisecting the lovely visible six pack of his abs as it did.  But all of that took second place to the spectacle of his other large, square hand, curling around a very impressively aroused cock.  

His flannel pajama pants were pushed half way down on muscular thighs, and he was fisting himself slowly, foreskin sliding, his thumb curving over a mushroom-like head on each upward stroke.  He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and Ginny’s mouth went a bit dry as he paused for a moment to reach down and caress his balls, and she had an unimpeded view of Harry completely erect for the first time.  

She didn’t have much to compare it to, but she thought that he must be…rather large.  His erection arced away from a thick patch of curly black hair in an elegant curve that reached to just beneath his navel, nearly as thick around as her wrist, slightly darker in color than the pale skin covering his pronounced hipbones.   His hand had closed easily around it, but she doubted that hers would.  She’d felt it pressed against her one sweet, sweltering afternoon by the lake when he’d been snogging her giddy and had rolled until he was on top of her, but feeling something through several layers of clothing and seeing it were two completely different things.  

His hand came back to curl around himself again, and the thought that she probably shouldn’t be watching this never even occurred to her as his fist began to move again, slowly up and down, and his head pressed back into the pillow beneath his dark head, back arching.  It was, unquestionably, the most erotic thing she had ever seen in her life.  Moonlight filtered in from a window somewhere, falling across his chest, his hips, his _hand,_ and she began to feel feverish and restless as she watched him.  She wished fervently that she could hear him, even knowing that Harry would not be loud; he was too self-contained, too controlled.   There would be no groaning and crying out with Harry, but she thought that even harsh breathing and slight moans would probably be the most erotic sounds she’d ever heard, simply because they would be surrendered so involuntarily. She became aware of her own rough breathing, the heat of the small enclosed space of her bed.  He was so handsome, so artless.  She knew that Harry didn’t believe that there was anything special about him, but she could testify unequivocally that he was wrong. Watching him as the muscles flexed in his strong forearm and bunched and bulged in his hard stomach and thighs made her feel lightheaded, and rather forcefully aroused.

Unconsciously, her eyes never leaving the spectacle in the small mirror, she spread her own slender, pale legs, her feet moving restlessly on the velvet duvet.  She watched as his hand sped up a bit, and his jaw tensed as if he were gritting his teeth.  Slowly, staring at the shifting muscles in his chest and the long, elegant sweep of his pale throat, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed heavily, she slid her own hand up to cup one small breast, fingers idly plucking at the hardened nipple through the heavy fabric of the tattered jersey.  It sent a bright flash of heat through her stomach and lower, and her fingers restlessly followed it.  Harry’s hips began to move as he thrust through his own hard fist just as she pressed the heel of her hand over her mound, and the resultant surge of heat caused her to moan.  

“Harry,” she breathed, watching the way the plump head of his cock appeared and disappeared within his fist.  “Oh, Harry…”

Impatient with the separation the cotton knickers created between her fingers and the bright, sharp edge of her own arousal, she gracelessly yanked the oversized shirt to her waist and shoved her hand down beneath the elastic waistband, sliding it directly between her legs.  She wasn’t in the mood to diddle about; Harry’s exhibition had taken care of any need for that.  Now, she just wanted to make sure that she came when he did, and he seemed well down the road.  His face was strained, sweat had beaded on his brow and his fringe was clinging to it, and his hand was a blur on his swollen flesh.  

When her fingers touched the springy, coarse curls between her own legs she found them wet and slick with the evidence of her body’s readiness.  Pressing between plump folds, she immediately began to rub her index and middle fingers over the swollen nub hidden there.  A strangled cry came from between her lips at the stab of almost painful sensation her hand created, and she had to fight to keep her eyes open to watch Harry as he desperately shoved his pajama pants down and kicked out of them, lifting and spreading his knees, exposing all of himself to her view.  She was now nearly incoherent with lust and she could hear the wet sound of her hand moving over engorged tissue, but she couldn’t have torn her eyes away from the spectacle in the hand mirror had she been of a mind to try.  

Harry’s hand paused on his dick for a moment, and Ginny’s hand paused as well and she gasped loudly, staring …he gracefully lifted his knees to his impressive chest and spread them wide, stuck his index and middle fingers in his mouth to wet them, then reached down and was entering the forbidden, puckered opening of his body with first one, then the second finger. She watched them disappear all the way in a smooth, practiced slide and she gaped.  That was…wrong.  Illicit.  Taboo.  But it apparently felt phenomenal, because he was once again fisting his cock, his grip so hard now that his knuckles were white, and he was arching into his own hands desperately.  Ginny saw harsh, bald hunger reflected on the strained, beautiful face and she could not deny that watching him get himself off was the hottest thing she’d ever seen in her life.

He began to pump his fingers in and out of himself in rhythm with the hand that jerked his cock and her own hand went back to work as well, pressing hard, caring nothing for finesse in the rush to completion.  She desperately wished there was a way for her to both hold the mirror and shove something into her own needy, empty spaces but she was too far gone to even try to sort that out.  And then Harry arched hard, his neck straining and his body shuddering, and thick streams of pearly fluid erupted over his hand, shooting shiny stripes onto his chest and his belly. Ginny scrubbed hard against hyper-sensitive flesh, her own legs spread wide, hips jerking as wave after wave of almost unbearable pleasure washed over her.  She knew that she was crying out and cursing, but it didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that she’d crested as he had.  She knew she’d screamed his name as she came, had seen his lips form something, and she inserted her name into his silence as her eyes rolled up in her head.  

For long moments, she lay staring at the dark canopy above her bed, her chest shuddering as she fought for air.  Finally, she lifted the mirror again and sought Harry.  He was laying on his back still, one leg relaxed and flat, the other bent at the knee.  His chest was rising and falling harshly; his arm lifted, forearm resting over his eyes.  She admired his body for a long moment before she realized that his throat was working, his fists were both clenched, and the despair rolling off of him was tangible even through the image in a mirror.  

His post orgasmic misery haunted her all through the next day.  Was he lonely?  Did he miss her?  Selfishly, she found herself hoping that was the cause of his unhappiness, but she couldn’t stop the little nagging feeling that she was missing something.  Then she received an owl from Hermione, and all thoughts of Harry’s confusing emotions left her.

Hermione didn’t write often, and she never provided any details of what the trio was doing.  Most of the messages were in an obscure sort of ‘Hermione code’ that Ginny spent days trying to decipher, and she was never certain she’d actually gotten the message Hermione had hoped to impart.  This time, the note was even more enigmatic and prosaic than usual.  

_Dear Friend, (_ this always caused Ginny to smirk, but Hermione had explained that no names could be used) _All is well here.  Your primary source of interest seems somewhat subdued of late but is otherwise fine.  The weather is fair, which is good, and things go well.  Herman (_ her code name for Ron _) sends his regards and requests that you behave yourself.  I told him to save his breath._ (Ginny snickered.  Hermione did know her so well.)

_There has been one interesting development. Pigeons that we had thought lost have returned to roost. You remember; the white and black ones that went astray? (_ Ginny frowned.  What the hell did all of this talk of pigeons mean?) _They seem tired and undernourished, but otherwise unharmed.  One can only imagine where they have been, but they have been welcomed back into the coupe by the keeper.  They were never my favorite birds; too temperamental.  I shall simply keep my distance from them so as not to find myself bitten!_

_Well, that’s it for now.  Take care of yourself, and know that we are doing the same._

_Your Friend._

Ginny read it again, then again.  The part about her primary source of interest was clear; Harry, of course.  And she could not tell Hermione how, but she knew that he’d been subdued and withdrawn.  But the part about the pigeons was a complete mystery.  She knew that Hermione was trying to tell her something important, but she simply could not sort it out.  It was still bothering her that night when she enclosed herself in her bed and pulled the mirror from beneath her pillow.   Whispering the words three times, she answered the questions and then watched wide-eyed as the mist cleared and Harry’s face appeared.

The first thing she noticed was that he was very pale.  His brows and lashes were harsh against the whiteness of his skin.  The second thing that became immediately obvious was that he was angry.  His green eyes were snapping and his lips were curled, and a muscle was flexing in his square jaw.  He was staring at something or someone that she couldn’t see, but whatever it was, it was making him furious.  She didn’t watch him long this night; as his misery had been the night before, his antipathy was tangible, and it made her nervous.  She could only pray that he never looked at her the way he was looking at something or someone right then, and she ended the spell.

Feeling vaguely guilty, as if she were spying on him, she skipped the next night, then the night after that.  She sent an equally innocuous note back to Hermione, and tried to concentrate on her studies, but when Friday rolled around and she crawled into her bunk, she was feeling restless and lonely.  She lay trying to relax on top of the duvet for a few minutes, then gave up and slipped her hand beneath her pillow and withdrew the mirror.  Secretly, she’d been both hoping and fearing that she’d find Harry pleasuring himself again.  Tonight, when the mist cleared, she could see that he was not.  

He was wide awake and staring straight at her, and she jerked so hard she nearly dropped the mirror.  It took her a few moments to realize that he wasn’t, in fact, looking at her.  He was simply staring, as if deep in thought. 

“I need to see more,” she whispered, and again, the view expanded.  He was staring out of a window, she saw then, wearing just his pajama pants, arms crossed across a broad chest, shoulders bunched and tight.  It was as if she were sitting just outside, like a bird on the ledge, staring at him through the glass.  He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his eyes looked wide and very green, oddly vulnerable without the glass and frames in front of them.  His skin looked faintly blue in the moonlight and she wondered dimly if he were cold.  While she watched, he lifted one strong hand and carded it through his thick dark hair, then let both arms drop to his sides.  She saw him frown, saw him sigh, then close his eyes and shake his head slightly before turning to make his way back to his bed.  Clearly, he had things on his mind, things that did not make him happy.  He crawled beneath the covers, rolling to his side and pulling them up over his shoulder, but he didn’t close his eyes.  Not for the longest time.  He just stared, unseeing, into the darkness.  This bothered her almost as much as his unhappiness had earlier in the week. 

After that, she became obsessed with Harry’s moods.  She checked him at least twice a day, and there was little to reassure her.  He grew thinner, more and more pale.  She checked in on him each morning, hoping to see him eating breakfast but the most he seemed to manage was a cup of tea.  She checked him during her lunch hour, only to find that he was usually with Ron and Hermione in the library at Grimmauld Place, and the clear light of day showed how haggard he appeared.  She’d check him at bedtime, and she didn’t see him touching himself again but she saw how restless he was, and how unhappy.  During the daylight hours he seemed to make an effort to hide his despondency, but at night, in his bed, he just looked…lost.  Ginny began to think she should get in touch with Hermione somehow, tell her to watch him, but then how did she explain her concerns?  She couldn’t admit she’d been spying on him using a spell and a magic mirror; that was just…creepy.  She vowed to redouble her efforts, and if he truly began to frighten her, than she’d just have to come clean.  The thought made her palms sweat. 

He disappeared again a few days later, and was gone for nearly two weeks.  By the time Harry’s image reappeared in the mirror, Ginny was so relieved to see him that she nearly wept.  She was also profoundly relieved to see that, unlike the last time he’d disappeared and then returned looking dreadful, this time he actually seemed better.  There was a bit more color in his face, a bit more life in his green eyes.  Something had changed; she didn’t know what, but something had improved his outlook.  She liked to think that she was merely happy because he was better and not relieved that she wouldn’t have to reveal that she was some sort of twisted voyeur. 

She took to watching him in the evenings again.  Finishing her dinner and her homework, she would retire early and spend time enclosed on her silenced bunk just watching Harry.  He looked a little more relaxed, she noticed.  She saw him playing chess with her brother’s freckled hands; saw him smiling at something someone said and it was an easier expression than she’d seen on his face in a while.  She saw him drinking what looked like a butterbeer.  His appetite was better; she saw him snacking often, and the relief she felt was palpable.  She was so relieved in fact that it took her a few nights to process that while she recognized Ron’s sturdy hands when they came near Harry, and Hermione’s efficient ones, there was another pair that began to appear that she did not recognize.  She didn’t even realize that they were there until late one evening as she watched Harry’s face, and an unfamiliar hand pressed on his shoulder just to the left of his neck before pulling away, as if someone had touched him casually in passing.

It wasn’t so much the hand that caught her attention, actually; it was Harry’s response to it.  An expression passed over his face, brief, but distinct.  It was surprise and then…pleasure.  It made his lips curl slightly, his eyes warm infinitesimally.  Had she not made such an exhaustive study of him over the past few weeks, she might have missed it entirely.  But she had, and she froze, her eyes wide.  Whoever that was, their touch had pleased Harry, and jealousy surged through her chest.  She hadn’t liked seeing him miserable, but she liked his responding to someone else’s touch that way even less.

After that, her sessions with the mirror took on a whole new dimension.  Who was that, who had touched him so casually?  She searched her memory, but the most she seemed to recall about the hand was that it had been slender, and pale.  She’d thought it was male, but now she wasn’t so sure.  It could have been a woman’s hand, and the idea of it made her both seethe and squirm.  He’d broken up with her, but in her mind, he was still hers.  How dare someone else touch him?  Everyone in the Order knew that he was meant for her.  But then again, her inconvenient inner voice argued, he was out there fighting a war, and she was stuck at Hogwarts with the rest of the children.  The impotence of her position infuriated her, and made her that much more determined to figure out just who that pale hand had belonged to. 

The next time she saw that languid, elegant hand was two nights after the first, and again, it touched Harry, just tips of the long fingers tracing over his shoulders in passing, but this time she saw him close his eyes for a moment and then lick his lips.  When they reopened, she saw heat flare before he could control it, and anger spiked within her.  Now, not only was the owner of the hand touching him, Harry was clearly responding to it.  That night, when he kicked off his covers and slid his hand down into the flannel pajama pants instead of arousing Ginny, it made her furious.  She knew exactly what he was wanking over, and it wasn’t her.  She ended the spell with a hiss and tossed the mirror onto the duvet.  How dare he?  

She didn’t look again for two days.  She was livid, and the people at Hogwarts cut her a wide birth.  She knew that it wasn’t rational, but she felt very much as if Harry were cheating on her.  She’d been in love with him since she was nine years old, had watched him grow from a skinny boy with a shaggy bowl cut and broken glasses to the man of her dreams, and she wasn’t about to surrender him simply because he’d gone all noble and stupid and broken up with her in order to ‘protect’ her.  So who was this woman, for she was convinced that the graceful, pale hand was feminine.  Who was at Grimmauld Place with _her_ Harry?  Clearly, she must be someone older who didn’t _need_ his protection, she thought and bristled helplessly. 

After days of impotent fuming, where she refused to look in the mirror even though curiosity was eating her alive, she finally got hold of herself and decided on a course of action.  She would figure out just who the hell it was moving in on _her_ Harry, and then she’d find a way to get to Grimmauld Place and break it up, enlisting the aid of the twins if she had to.  They had a shop in Hogsmeade now, and one of them was on the premises several times a week.  They’d help her; she convinced herself of it.  It was the only answer, but first she had to know just who she was fighting.  That night, she was in her enclosure by six, the spell cast, her eyes avid on Harry’s reflection.

He was talking to someone.  His head was turned to the side, and his expression was avid, interested in whatever was being said.  She saw him nod, saw him glance over his shoulder as if to make sure they weren’t being overheard before turning back and answering, his eyes level and intense.  

“I need to see more,” she whispered, but to her frustration, the view widened but still included nothing but Harry.  He was on a dusty dark green settee she recognized as being in the sitting room at Grimmauld Place, sitting sideways, one knee raised along the back cushion, one arm casual along the top, his other hand resting on his thigh.  He was leaning forward slightly, listening, his dark head cocked to one side.  He nodded, answered, his full lips quirking slightly in the ghost of a smile.  And then Ginny stiffened, her eyes narrowing, as that white hand entered the frame from the left and skimmed lightly over Harry’s knee.  “Back off, you cow,” she muttered, but of course the owner of the hand could not hear her.  The long pale fingers skirted over the thick denim covering the knee that was against the back of the settee, and then slid a bit higher onto the thick muscle of Harry’s thigh.  She saw Harry stop talking, saw him close his eyes briefly and swallow heavily before covering the willowy hand with his own larger one and squeezing it quickly before releasing it.  Harry straightened, and the hand slid away, an unmistakable caress, and Ginny fought for a deep breath.  Her chest hurt, and her eyes burned, and she was torn between wanting to hurl the mirror across the room and wanting to document each perceived transgression.  

How could he do this to her?  He knew she still loved him, still wanted to be with him.  She’d told him at the wedding, when they’d been dancing.  He hadn’t met her eyes then, just mumbled something about it being impossible, but she’d assumed it had been because of his determination to protect her.  Now, she wasn’t sure.  Had there been someone else, even then?  And who was in the Order that even seemed likely?  It wasn’t Hermione; she knew Hermione’s hands from months of watching them, and they were tawny gold and efficient, just like the rest of her.  It couldn’t be Tonks.  Tonks was with Remus, and besides, Tonks never moved her hands like this, with such fluid, negligent grace.  She adored Tonks, but there wasn’t a graceful motion to be had in the whole of her compact body.  The only one who seemed to fit the bill was Fleur, and rage unlike anything Ginny had ever felt roared through her.  

Ginny had never liked Fleur.  She was conceited, and snotty and thought she was better than everyone else.  But worst of all, she was married to Ginny’s _brother_.  Her wonderful brother Bill, who had been savaged by the werewolf Greyback and left with such hideous scarring.  Fleur had protested that it didn’t matter to her, but clearly, the tart had changed her mind.  It was the only thing that made sense.  Fleur was pale, and elegant, the very definition of languid, and with her Veela heritage, if she decided to turn it on him poor Harry wouldn’t have stood a chance.  Utterly convinced that she was right, certain that Bill’s wife had decided to betray him with Harry, Ginny vowed to watch until she had the woman dead to right’s, and then enlist the aid of the twins to show the faithless Jezebel for what she was.  Spurred by righteous indignation on behalf of her brother and poor clueless Harry, she settled in to watch, eyes avid.

For the longest time, nothing happened.  Harry played a game of chess with Ron, he chatted with Hermione and then someone else who Ginny thought might be Lupin, but the pale hands did not reappear.  At nearly ten o’clock, he said something then stood, and Ginny realized that he had excused himself to go to bed.  She watched as he moved from the room, up the dark staircase and down a long hallway.  When she expected him to turn right into the room he’d once shared with Ron, she saw that he continued straight instead, going further down the hall to what had once been Sirius’ room.  He opened the door and stepped into the shadowy recesses, not bothering with the lights, closing the door behind him.  

She watched him avidly as he crossed to the closet, and disrobed in the murkiness.  Broad, sculpted shoulders caught what light there was, flexed as he pulled his shirt off then shifted as his hands went to his waist and unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans.  He toed off his trainers and left them where they landed, letting the jeans fall and stepping out of them.  He was standing in just his y-fronts and stretched, his arms up over his head, yawning widely, the skin on his sides pulling taut over his ribs, smooth as silk.  For some reason, she’d thought that the intense conversation on the settee had been in regards to an assignation, but as she watched him casually step into worn flannel pajama pants and pull them up to his hard narrow hips, leaving them clinging to prominent hip bones, she began to think that maybe she’d misread the signs.  Maybe, just maybe what she’d seen on the couch was him gently rebuffing Fleur, telling her he couldn’t be involved with something that would hurt Bill.  That would be just like the Harry she knew.  

He ran his square hands through his thick hair and yawned again, scratching the back of his neck before turning to walk to the double bed, and Ginny suddenly felt a bit ashamed of herself. Had she misjudged him completely?  When he slid into bed and removed his glasses to place them on the bedside table, then rolled to his side and pulled the blankets up over one square shoulder, she was torn between a dizzying rush of relief and a healthy dose of remorse.  Even though he didn’t know what she’d been thinking, she still felt terribly guilty.  Jealousy had made her crazy, and in her mind she’d accused the poor man of things he had no intention of actually _doing_.  She shook her head and ended the spell, heartily ashamed of herself.  It wasn’t the first time her temper had caused her to do or think things that she regretted later; she was just glad that Harry never had to know anything about it. 

She slept deeply for several hours but when she came awake, it was as if someone had shaken her shoulder briskly.  She sat straight up, staring into the darkness, blinking quickly.  Had there been a noise?  She listened intently.  If there had been, there was nothing now.  But as she sat there, she could not help the nagging feeling that she was missing…something.  She reached for her wand under her pillow to check the time, and her fingers curled instead around the cool silver handle of the mirror.

Pulling it from its hiding place, she stared at it for a long moment.  He was probably sound asleep, just like she should be.  But if he was, she reasoned, it wouldn’t hurt to check and if he were awake and perhaps…touching himself again…A slow smile curled her full lips at the thought, and heat spiraled through her.  She’d been so obsessed with the theory that he’d found someone else that she hadn’t touched herself in over a week, and in that moment she felt the lack.  Perhaps she could just watch his beautiful face as he slept and touch herself, anyway.  She didn’t want to examine too carefully what was wrong with that scenario, but she settled back against her pillows and pulled the mirror before her face.  She could see her own reflection; brown eyes wide in a pale little face, avid and sly.  A slight blush tinged her cheeks as she muttered “ _specularis custodia, specularis custodia, speularis custodia…”_

_“Are you quite certain?”_   The mirror intoned.

“Yes, yes,” she said dismissively.  

_“Take caution with your wishes…”_

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” she hissed, and her own image began to fade, replaced with the familiar curling fog.  After a few moments it began to clear, and Ginny pulled the image towards her face eagerly.  

Harry was not asleep.  He was lying on his back, his hair mussed on the pillow beneath his head, his face fixed in taut lines, his lips slightly slack, his eyes vaguely unfocused.  There was sheen of sweat on his skin and as she watched his head jerked slightly and his neck arched. He looked…transported, and she smiled slowly.  She recognized that face.

“Naughty, naughty boy,” she murmured with a slow smile, her hand already inching down her stomach towards the hem of the jersey.  She had nothing on under it this night, and watching him squirm made her instantly needy.  “I need to see more….”  She whispered to the mirror. 

_“Take caution with your wishes…”_

Ginny frowned, irritated.  It had never done this before.  “We’ve been all through that,” she hissed.  “I need to see more…”

_“Remember, you asked…”_

“You are not my sodding mother,” she spat at the mirror.  “I know.  Now, _I need to see more!”_

_“Very well,”_ the voice intoned darkly.

Heartily aggravated to be lectured by a ruddy bewitched inanimate object, Ginny scowled until the image slowly began to expand.  

“Thanks, very, you bloody…” but the words died in her throat, because it promptly closed up and she couldn’t breathe, let alone speak.

As the mirror pulled back, she saw Harry’s lovely chest, square shoulders and flat abs appear.  His forearms were tensed, veins visible beneath the smooth skin, muscles flexed and moving.  She’d thought she see him pleasuring himself, but as his waist and then his hips came into view, that was not what she saw, and for a hanging, suspended moment, she could scarcely process what she was actually viewing at all.  White noise roared in her head, a wave of shocking heat was immediately followed by a bone deep cold.  He wasn’t alone.  He wasn’t bloody alone, but it wasn’t Fleur…

A weak, whimpering sound worked its way unbidden from her throat.

Harry’s hands were not on his own cock; they were twisted in someone’s hair.  Someone’s thick, almost white blond hair.  She could only see the back of their head and their long slender neck, but that hair was unmistakable, and then the words of Hermione’s mysterious note floated through her head.  

‘ _There has been one interesting development. Pigeons that we had thought lost have returned to roost. You remember; the white and black ones that went astray?’_  Pigeons that had gone astray.  A black one, and a white one.  Suddenly the meaning that had been eluding her for weeks was blindingly clear. Black.  Snape.  And White?  Malfoy.

She stared in dawning horror.  Draco Malfoy.  It was Draco Malfoy in bed with Harry, Draco fucking Malfoy whose hands were gripping Harry’s hard hips, long thumbs curved over his hipbones, holding him down.  Draco Malfoy whose hair was twisted in Harry’s hard hands.  Draco Malfoy whose head was bobbing up and down and who was clearly….

Ginny swallowed a shocking rush of bile that hit the back of her throat.  Malfoy was sucking Harry off.  She couldn’t see his face, but she wasn’t stupid.  His head moved on his lean neck, his surprisingly square shoulders flexed with each change of angle.  His skin was even paler than Harry’s and gleamed like the sheen on a pearl in the moonlight, and his hair looked silver between Harry’s clutching fingers.  Draco Malfoy was giving Harry a blowjob, and something in Ginny curled up and died.

She so wanted to throw the mirror from her, to storm and rage.  She wanted to scream, and cry.  But she did none of those things.  She just stared into the mirror, watching as her hopes and dreams collapsed into steaming rubble.  She couldn’t look away.  She felt bewitched, forced to watch her worst nightmare, unable to tear her eyes from the images in her hand.  She was obliged to see Harry’s hand drop to Malfoy’s nape and curl there tenderly, compelled to watch as Malfoy’s hands spread and slid up over Harry’s hard stomach, fingers pressing into pale flesh to caress his muscled chest even as his head moved with more purpose.  She saw Harry’s head drop back and his eyes drift closed in bliss, his tongue dampening his lips.  And then he was saying something, and he caught Malfoy beneath his arms and lifted him until their faces were aligned, and tears filled Ginny’s eyes as she watched Harry lift his head and take the blonds’ mouth in a deep, searching kiss, cheeks hollow, jaw moving, one arm snaking around pale shoulders as the other hand came to card through that silky hair as if he couldn’t stop touching it.  

Harry rolled them then, and she saw Draco Malfoy’s face for the first time in nearly six months, and she couldn’t stop the gasp that came from her parted lips.  

Malfoy had spent all of the previous year looking gray, and ill.  His trademark hair had been lank and he’d been terribly thin and gaunt.  When they’d all discovered that he’d been charged by Voldemort with killing Dumbledore, the pieces had fallen into place.  The stress of his assignment had rendered what had once been a very handsome boy a mere shadow of himself, but she had never spared him a moment of pity.  That monster had let Death Eaters into Hogwarts, he had betrayed them all, the slimy little bastard.  He might not have cast the spell, but it was because of him that Dumbledore was dead and Bill was disfigured.  He should still be wasting, still look like the walking dead.  Instead, he was…

Stunning.

 The thought made her stomach clench, but it was undeniable.  Draco Malfoy, as he lay there beneath Harry Potter’s strong, lithe body was almost ethereally beautiful.  Harry pressed up onto his hands, muscles in his arms and back bulging as he looked down into the other young man’s face, and for just that moment Ginny could see him as Harry must be seeing him.

The front of his trademark hair was longer than the back and sides, and it hung over his forehead and down his cheek and framed eyes almost silver in the moonlight.  Those eyes were wide, staring from between surprisingly dark lashes and from beneath elegant, arched brows.  He was still thin but the grayness in his complexion was gone, and his skin was porcelain perfection stretched over the slightly pointed and yet stunningly beautiful planes and angles of his aristocratic face.  The only flaw on the slender body were two long transverse scars that bi-sected his torso about a foot apart, what had surely been clean cuts that had healed and faded to a dull pink against the white skin.  Ginny remembered what had made those scars, and as she watched, Harry’s darker fingers traced them gently before Draco caught the hand and brought it to his lips.  Lips that had always been full, and were now swollen and pink from Harry’s kisses, shiny, wet…He was looking up into Harry’s face as Harry spoke to him, and his eyes were deep and full, and she saw him bite that puffy lower lip in every appearance of hesitation.  After a moment he nodded, and Harry kissed him quickly before sitting up, on his knees between Malfoy’s long, spread legs.  

Ginny didn’t want to watch.  She really didn’t.  But she seemed to have no choice.  She couldn’t drop the mirror; it stayed firmly in her hand, her fingers remained tight around the handle.  She wanted to look away, but her eyes would not follow the prompting of her mind.  And so she saw Harry slip his knees beneath Malfoy’s long lean thighs, saw him curl his hands behind the pale knees and lift them until his calves were resting on Harry’s shoulders.  The angle prevented her from seeing Malfoy’s bits, but she didn’t have to.  She saw his face fill with color as Harry looked down at him, and that told her everything she needed to know.  And then Harry had something in his hand, some sort of tube and he was squeezing a clear jell onto his fingers, and Ginny began to pant in distress.  

“No,” she breathed, her head moving back and forth even while her eyes scarcely blinked.  “No, no, no…”

She didn’t see where Harry put those lubricated fingers.  She just saw his hand drop between his own legs, saw his elbow move as he slowly pressed forward, but she saw Malfoy’s face, and what was left of her heart crumbled to ash.  He was staring up into Harry’s eyes, his wide and trusting, and she saw his lips fall open again, his chin lift, his brow furrow gently.  She saw him lick his lips, nod in response to a question, close his eyes for a moment as Harry’s elbow moved again.  And then the blond was wincing, but it didn’t look like pain, and moving his head restlessly against the pillow, hands coming up to grip Harry’s biceps, long toes curling.  Harry’s arm began an unmistakable ‘sawing’ motion, forward and back, and Malfoy’s fingers clutched and dug into his skin.  After what could have been merely seconds or as long as an hour as Ginny lost all sense of time, she saw Harry’s hand reappear, fingers shiny, and he gripped Malfoy’s lean thighs and lifted them, then pressed forward slowly with his narrow hips.  Malfoy’s mouth dropped open on a silent cry, brow furrowing, but when Harry might have paused he clutched his hard sides and pulled him in, saying something that Ginny was grateful that she could not hear.  And then, even that small mercy was denied her.

“No, I want it,” she heard the blond say raggedly, and she gasped aloud but still could not look away.  “I want you…inside of me.”

“I don’t…Draco, I can’t…” Harry sounded tense, worried.

“You aren’t hurting me,” Malfoy insisted.  “Harry, please.”

The tears that Ginny hadn’t noticed were in her eyes spilled down her cheeks as Draco Malfoy took what should have been hers.  She watched as Harry lost his virginity to the one person she’d most despised in her life, and she knew that she’d never be the same again.  

Once he was pressed groin to groin with the other man, Harry paused, one hand going to Malfoy’s face, holding his chin, staring into his eyes.  He just stared for the longest time, and then he kissed him again, and it was a kiss of sweetest benediction, complete acceptance, tenderness and leashed passion.  Malfoy’s legs slipped down to curl around Harry’s ribcage and he reached up, long pale fingers curling in Harry’s black hair.  He tugged gently, and Harry lifted his lips, his eyes avid.  “Move, Harry.”  Malfoy whispered with a gentle smile, hand dropping to curl around Harry’s nape.  “It doesn’t hurt.  Move.”

Harry lowered his chest to Malfoy’s then, tawny skin against the ivory, hands sliding beneath the slender frame, climbing up his back to curl over the top of surprisingly strong shoulders and hooking there, anchoring himself.  Then he did begin to move, slow, sinuous, hips rolling, muscles in his taut buttocks contracting and releasing, moving Malfoy’s body with each slow thrust.  He dropped his head into the space between Malfoy’s neck and shoulder, his face in the blond hair, and his other arm came around Harry’s shoulders and his fingers clutched as Harry’s movement began to gather momentum. 

Ginny could hear the bed begin to squeak, the soft sounds that came from Malfoy’s throat with each incursion, the sound of flesh meeting flesh as they moved together with more and more intensity.  And even in the pain of watching, in the agony of denial and betrayal, Ginny became almost painfully aroused.  Again, almost against her will, her free hand slipped down her stomach and up under Harry’s tattered jersey and she slipped her fingers between her thighs and found the heat and the wet and the want, and rubbed hard.  

She listened to Harry’s gasps and Malfoy’s sobs, watched the strong bodies strain together, so elegant, so exquisite.  She gasped and cried, but still she watched, even as her vision began to waver and the spiral of her own approaching orgasm pulled her down.  And as she came within her own hand she saw Harry thrust into Malfoy hard, then harder yet, back bowing, shoulders bunching; she saw the blond arch and cry out, heard Harry growl and then hiss, curses rolling from his lips as he shuddered forcefully,  and Ginny threw her head back and allowed herself to scream.

Again, time meant nothing.  She came back to herself slowly, lying panting against her pillows, the mirror still clutched in her trembling hand.  Surrendering, knowing she had no choice, her eyes went back to it.

Harry had collapsed on his side next to Malfoy, who was still staring up at the ceiling, his hand flat on his chest, his breathing ragged but his face…transported.  Harry’s eyes were closed and his breathing was also rough, but as she watched his black lashes fluttered and his eyes opened, a startling bottle green, and he lifted an arm slicked with sweat, his hand lifting to gently cup Malfoy’s pointed jaw.  He turned his head toward him, and their eyes met.  

“I love you,” Harry whispered, his fingers stroking the pale skin.  Malfoy’s hand lifted and covered Harry’s, and their long fingers twined.  “I don’t know how, or why, but I do.”

“I love you, too,” he breathed, then turned his face and kissed Harry’s palm, lashes drifting closed over luminous eyes, and Harry leaned in and pressed their slick foreheads together.  

What was left of Ginny’s strength shattered.  She screamed then, a sound of anguish and fury, and sat up, slamming the offending hand mirror into the heavy oaken bed post again, and again, and again.  The glass shattered, sending silvery shards across the bedspread.  The frame bent onto itself in an unrecognizable shape.  Blood slid down her wrist from her lacerated palm, and still she slammed what was left of the mirror into the wood until she collapsed sobbing onto the bed.  Finally, finally, she was able to throw the blasted thing aside.

She cried for a long time.  When there were no tears left, when she was empty, she lifted her head, long ginger hair falling over her eyes.  She pushed it back with a bloodied hand and went to press herself up when she caught sight of one of the shards of glass, winking up at her from the dark red velvet.  It was a triangular shape, about the size of a snitch, and reflected in it she could see one soft, beloved green eye framed in a sweep of inky black lashes.  Ginny stared at it, and then reached for it, lifting it in her trembling hand.  

“Oh, Harry,” she whispered, the fingers of her other hand rising to touch the cold surface of the glass.  “God help me, Harry, I still love you.”  

Tears slipped off of her chin, but she didn’t notice.  She noticed nothing but the love reflected in that beautiful eye, and the pain of knowing that it wasn’t for her.  And she knew then that she could not live with that, not knowing what she knew now, not after having seen what she’d seen.  

It was the blood dripping down her wrist that decided it for her.  Why, the cut on her palm, and it was a deep one, didn’t even hurt.  She had no capacity for pain left, she realized. Nothing could hurt her now. Slowly, almost gracefully, she turned her arm and angling her head to stare at the unblinking green eye, she pressed the jagged edge along her wrist, pushing hard, cutting deep.  She’d been right, she reflected absently as she lay back down, the bloodied slice of mirror in her hand, her wrist angled over the edge of the bed and her blood dripping to the floor; it hadn’t hurt at all.

_“You were warned,”_ the whispery voice intoned.  “ _Take caution with your wishes…”_

There was no one to answer, and it faded into silence.   


End file.
